


until there’s nothing but sky

by celaenos



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Beaujester Week, F/F, One Shot, Rapunzel Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-20 00:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19982932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/pseuds/celaenos
Summary: There is a girl up in the tower.[beaujester week, day 5]





	until there’s nothing but sky

There is a girl up in the tower.

Beau hears people talking about it, while she’s out walking through the town. It’s small, rural, mostly made up of halflings but not solely by any means. She’s never been there before, just passing through. To _where,_ she doesn’t know exactly, not yet. But, seeing if she can help some chick get out of a tower sounds like an okay way to spend an afternoon. 

Except that there’s nothing whatsoever for her to climb up or down. It’s just pristine, goes up and up and up for ages and there’s no sign of footholds or tree branches, or doors or… anything. Beau yells on up, to see if anybody is actually up there or if this is some halfling hazing that the town pushes onto newcomers.

“Hey!” she hollers, “I got some candy, also, I think maybe something’s on fire down here!”

A blue girl sticks her head out the window and laughs. “There’s no fire.”

Beau shrugs. “Whoops, guess I put it out. Hey, how the fuck do you get up and down from there?”

“I don’t,” the girl says. “Do you really have candy?”

“No, sorry. I lied to see if anyone was really up there. Do you want to?”

“Have candy? YES!”

“No,” Beau corrects. “Get down.”

The girl shrugs. Beau can’t quite tell—it’s too far away—but something about her face looks conflicted. She tells Beau that her mother is asleep; her friends come and bring them supplies and put them in that bucket and pull them up. It wouldn’t hold a person, though. It’s not strong enough. Beau walks over towards the bucket and gives it a quick, tentative test of her weight and decides against trying to test it any further.

“I have this canvas,” Jester—that’s how she introduces herself—calls down. “I could try tying it together. Pull you up?” she offers with a shrug. “I’m pretty strong.”

Beau’s got nothing better to do today. “Sure, let’s give it a whirl.”

…

…

It works. 

Beau flips into the room and lands in a squat; a move she perfected a long time ago and Jester claps and looks impressed. It’s a nice feeling, not one Beau is used to, these days.

Jester gives her a tour of the place. Takes her around and shows Beau all her paintings, her old childhood toys, her drawings, everything. And then she sits down and stares at Beau with her chin in her hands. “So,” she says, “tell me about you.”

Beau doesn’t know where to start. Not with this girl smiling at her, all attentive and kind.

“Oh, um. Not much to tell, really.”

“That can’t be true.” 

Beau shrugs, avoids the question hanging in the air between them by asking if Jester wants help climbing down. Jester’s face twists uncomfortably and she says that she can’t leave her mom alone, but there’s that conflicted look on her face again. Now that they’re up close, Beau is sure of it. Jester wants to leave, but also, she doesn’t.

Beau already paid for a room in town, and it’s getting late, so, she tells Jester that she’s gonna head out. Jester sits up straight, looking worried. She asks if Beau will come back, looks almost panicked by it. 

“Yeah, sure,” Beau says. She doesn’t have anything better to do. The girl doesn’t need rescuing, it seems, but, she does seem to need something, maybe. Beau gives her a cocky grin, the sideways one that Tori always used to like best. Jester blushes at her and Beau laughs before climbing back down the canvas rope.

Beau goes back to her inn and tosses and turns all night. It’s annoying, the way her brain won’t shut up and let her go to sleep. Something about the girl got under her skin, in a good way. 

…

…

She goes back the next day. Climbs up the canvas painting make-shift rope and hangs out with Jester for most of the day. They goof off, Jester shows her a new painting, one that she did of Beau, last night. 

“Do you like it?” she asks, biting at her lower lip, nervous energy wafting off of her. Palms pressed tightly together as she waits for the verdict. Beau stares at the canvas. She has never had someone do that for her before. She’s never… looked a picture of herself before and felt… seen. The way that her parents always had their paintings done looked like someone Beau didn’t recognize. Someone doled up and slicked back and falling in line. Features that matched her parents but didn’t look like they belonged, something was always off. Irritating. She avoided looking at them whenever possible.

Now, she looks… kinda badass and it makes her feel amazing. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I do. Thanks, Jester.”

Jester _beams._

It does something annoying and wonderful to Beau’s stomach.

…

…

Jester feeds her lunch and talks about some guy named The Traveler who, honestly, Beau sort of thinks is maybe imaginary. She also hasn’t met Jester’s mom yet, despite Jester slipping past a room and saying it belonged to the woman. Before Beau can find a delicate way to ask if The Traveler and her mother are both something that she has invented to stave off the loneliness of this fucking tower, they hear a deep, low voice calling out from down below. 

“Oh, that’s one of my mom’s clients,” Jester says, easy. She goes over to the big window Beau climbed through and calls down to someone and Beau sees a glimpse of red and then Jester is back. Quickly shoving Beau into another room. They close the door and Jester flops down onto the bed. “Do you want an apple?” she asks, reaching out for the basket. Beau can hear muffled voices and then she hears some other muffled noises which are quickly drowned out as her mother’s door closes again. 

“Um, your mom…”

“She makes people feel good,” Jester says, easy. Proud. 

“Do you, um…”

“Oh. no. Not like that. Do you?”

“Oh well,” Beau snorts “I have, sure. But not, um, like that… necessarily.”

Jester nods and bites into an apple and tosses one over at Beau.

“How do they get up?” Beau asks, nodding over towards the door. 

“Magic. He can turn himself into a bird.”

Beau’s eyes widen as she chomps down onto her apple. “Dope.”

…

…

They keep hanging out like that. Beau keeps on adding days to her stay in the inn, and she’s running out of money, and she’s gonna need to do something about that—and soon. Pick up a job, get out of town, something like that. Soon.

She tells that to Jester, about two weeks later. 

The look she gives Beau back is sad, a bit scared, even. 

Beau knows what it feels like to be abandoned. She doesn’t wanna do it to Jester. But—

“You could come with, if you wanted.”

Jester’s eyes go _wide._ “Oh—” she shoots a quick look over at her mom’s room. Marion. Marion who is _hot_ and kind and smiles at Beau with both trepidation and delight. Marion who is afraid to leave this tower, Beau’s realized. Jester wants to more than anything, Beau’s also realized, but she loves her mother too much to consider leaving her alone. She looks back at Beau, pained. 

“It’s just an idea,” Beau says, quick. “Think on it,” she says. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Couple more days, probably, while I look for work. But—”

“Okay,” Jester says, quiet and thoughtful.

…

…

Beau gets up, eats a meager breakfast at the inn—shoveling some extra bacon into her pocket when the owner isn’t looking—and heads out to talk to some people about possible work. She tries her best to be polite, not to punch someone, to smile. 

It doesn’t go all that well, but she meets a half-orc who seems to find her amusing and needs a travel buddy to help do a string of odd jobs for a guy that he knows. 

“Fjord,” he introduces himself, holding out his hand for her to shake. Beau sizes him up, puffing out her chest and trying to make herself look taller. But, he just smiles back at her, easy, patient. Usually, that would make her want to punch him in the face then cut and run, but… something about it makes Beau grin, instead.

“Beauregard,” she says, grabbing his palm. “Call me Beau.”

…

…

She goes back up to the tower a few days later, the promise of a contract, almost definitely. She calls up to Jester, beaming once her head pops into sight. Once she rolls down the canvas, Beau climbs up the and rolls into the room with a flip and Jester jumps, like she wasn’t expecting her, or something, even though she dropped the canvas down. She looks at Beau sort of warily. 

“Hey?” Beau says, tentative.

“Hi.”

“Um… you okay?”

Before Beau can say anything else, Jester sort of jumps forward and leaps at Beau. She is sort of clutching at her and Beau thinks that maybe something is really wrong—with her mom, with the famous Traveler—something.

But then Jester kisses her and Beau’s brain goes haywire. 

“Oh,” Beau blinks at Jester once they pull apart. “Um...”

“I’m sorry,” she steps back, dropping Beau’s skin like it’s scalded her. “I should have asked.”

“No, it’s — it’s okay,” Beau says quickly. “You just surprised me, is all.”

Jester stays right where she is, half a step away from Beau, her fingers twitch though, like she wants to reach back out. “I want to come,” she whispers, so low that Beau can barely make it out. Like she’s afraid to fully say the words aloud. “I just…” she bites at her lower lip, gaze lifting and meeting Beau’s eyes. “Not only because… well,” she points at Beau’s lips and looks shy, all the sudden. “I’ve wanted to leave for a while. Before you got here, even. But then… you’re my friend. My first one, besides the Traveler. And I trust you, and I… like you,” she smiles, that shy one that Beau is coming to really like seeing on her face. “I’m just… scared to leave my mom alone. But, we talked a lot about it, the last few days. My mom told me to go and see the world,” Jester’s whole face lights up and she bounces on her toes, a little. “I just have to make sure to be careful and to remember to come back and visit.”

“Wow.” 

“Is — is that okay?” she asks. “Was, um, _all_ of it okay?”

Beau grins. “More than ok,” she tugs at the canvas, dropping it back out the window. Then she tugs at Jester, pulling her back close and breathing the words into her mouth, delighting in the way Jester shivers in response. “Pack your backs Jes, and get ready to climb down. There’s a hell of a lot to see outside this tower.”

Jester laughs into Beau’s mouth. “I already packed,” she says. “And I’m stronger than you,” she grins, teasing. “So, I’ll beat you to the ground.” She slings a pack over her shoulder, kisses Beau, and then flings herself out the window, laughing as she climbs down, faster than Beau ever has.

Beau grins all the way down. 


End file.
